Dr. David Morrison is the senior scientist at the Astrobiology Institute in the Ames Research Center in California. That's impressive. But for eight years he's been the agency's de facto expert on the (not) forthcoming apocalypse. How the hell did that happen?

The Awl reports that eight years ago, Dr. Morrison started writing a regular column, "Ask an Astrobiologist," for the institute's website. Since then he's gotten some 5000 emails from terrified crazies who are concerned that doomsday is imminent. Ages ago, the Mayans and Roland Emmerich predicted that the world would end on December 12th, 2012. With that date looming, Morrison gets up to 50 emails a week asking about the end of the world. In total he spends about an hour a day dealing with these queries and related outreach. Wow, what a trooper. Head over to the Awl for more on Dr. Morrison's quest to get the real truth out there. [The Awl]